Heliophysics Systems Observatory

The NASA Heliophysics Systems Observatory works with other NASA systems observatories to give NASA a complete picture of the Sun-Earth System. Mapping out this interconnected system requires a holistic study of the Sun’s influence on space, Earth and other planets. NASA has a fleet of spacecraft strategically placed throughout our heliosphere—from Parker Solar Probe at the Sun observing the very start of the solar wind, to satellites around Earth, to the farthest human-made object, Voyager, which is sending back observations on interstellar space. Each mission is positioned at a critical, well-thought out vantage point to observe and understand the flow of energy and particles throughout the solar system—all helping us untangle the effects of the star we live with.

Credits: NASA

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Framework for Heliophysics Education

Heliophysics Missions

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  • Active Orbiting Heliophysics Missions:

    Orbiting missions, with spacecraft orbiting an object in space, i.e. Earth, the Sun, the Moon, or other planets and moons, are just one type of NASA mission. Other missions include sounding rockets, which follow a parabolic trajectory, typically reaching altitudes of 50–200 km before returning to Earth. Cube satellites, or CubeSats, are small, standardized satellite, typically about the size of a Rubik's cube. Sounding rockets and CubeSats are quicker and less expensive methods for gathering data than missions that require rocket launches.

Heliophysics Missions Learning Resources

Explore these resources from the Heliophysics Resource Database to teach learners about NASA heliophysics missions.

A large portion of the Sun fills most of the image, with a peak of black space on the top right corner. Surrounding the Sun is waves of the solar atmosphere, appearing net-like. The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is small and flying into the atmosphere.

NASA Helio Club

Explore multiple heliophysics missions and other NASA program missions with a set of lessons and activities for out-of-school time environments or the classroom.
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Resource

Student Helioviewer

A student-friendly interactive with accessible NASA data, collected by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, the joint ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and others, about the Sun and its features, including solar flares, magnetic fields, sunspots, and CMEs.
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Resource
A hand holding a spacecraft model made of paper.

Build a Model Solar Probe

Discover the Parker Solar Probe and embark on a mission to the Sun with this easy-to-build spacecraft model.
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

Resource
An infographic showing the parts of the heliosphere.

IBEX Mission Heliosphere Infographic and Activity

Model the parts of the heliosphere with this infographic, created with real data from the IBEX mission. Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Resource
A screenshot of a woman giving a talk.

Exploring the Sun with Solar Orbiter

Watch a conversation about the Solar Orbiter mission with NASA scientist Dr. Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla (17 min video).
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

Resource
As the Moon crossed between the Sun and Earth during the 2023 annular eclipse, its shadow darkened skies across the United States.

Estimate the Speed of a Lunar Shadow with DSCOVR Mission Data

5 math problems created by a NASA scientist, using DSCOVR data collected during the 2017 eclipse across the US.
Level: Intermediate

Resource
Artist concept of mission spacecraft flying through magnetic fields around earth

Energy of a Magnetic Field and Solar Flares (MMS Data)

This activity helps students consider the energy stored in the magnetic field produced by different configurations of magnets and apply their findings to explain the release of energy from solar flares.
Level: Advanced

Resource
An hand holding an artistic creation of the Sun.

Make a Suncatcher with SDO Images

Make a suncatcher, inspired by images of the Sun captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

Resource
spacecraft surround by bright streaks

Parker Solar Probe Videos

These four short videos (approximately 4 minutes each) examine the challenges of NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to touch the Sun.
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Resource
A massive coronal mass ejection erupting from the Sun.

Coronal Mass Ejection Science "Digi Kit" (SOHO Data)

This web-based interactive lab blends physics and space science as students analyze authentic data from the NASA SOHO space observatory to measure the speed of a coronal mass ejection (CME). Level: Advanced

Resource
The Sun, shown against a black background. It is red toward the edges and fades to a light orange in the middle. Toward the right on the star, there is a large dark splotch — a sunspot.

Sunspot Science "Digi Kit" (SOHO Data)

This web-based interactive lab uses authentic data from NASA's Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), to have students explore sunspot images to make meaning of the terms "frequency" and "period" within the context of a natural phenomenon occurring on the sun.
Level: Advanced

Resource
Space Weather Math Educators Guide Cover

Space Weather Math

Educator guide containing hands-on activities, with embedded math problems, that explore the causes and effects of space weather. Includes data from SDO, Hinode, and other heliophysics missions.
Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Resource

ACE

Advanced Composition Explorer

Designed to collect and analyze particles from near and far, ranging from solar wind ions to galactic cosmic ray nuclei, ACE far exceeded its expected life span of five years and continues to provide data on space weather, and give advance warning of geomagnetic storms.

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Engineers hold the solar panels in place during a February 1997 checkout of the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft in a cleanroom at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where ACE was designed and built.
NASA/JHUAPL

ARTEMIS (THEMIS)

Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon's Interaction with the Sun

Launched in 2007, THEMIS studies how mass and energy move through the near-Earth space environment to determine the physical processes initiating auroras. In 2010, two of its five spacecraft were repurposed as ARTEMIS and moved to a new location to study similar processes closer to the Moon.

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Artists conception of the THEMIS spacecraft.
NASA

AWE

Atmospheric Waves Experiment

The Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) is attached to the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. From its space station perch, AWE focuses on colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow, to determine what combination of forces drive space weather in the upper atmosphere.

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An artist's conception of the international space station flying over earth's atmosphere. A yellowish beam comes down from the space station toward's Earth's atmosphere, leaving a multi-colored path across the sky below it, representing AWE's measurements.
This artist’s conception depicts AWE scanning the atmosphere from aboard the International Space Station. AWE will measure variations in infrared airglow to track atmospheric gravity waves as they move up from the lower atmosphere into space.
Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory

DSCOVR

Deep Space Climate Observatory

DSCOVR is a space weather station that monitors changes in the solar wind, providing space weather alerts and forecasts for geomagnetic storms that could disrupt power grids, satellites, telecommunications, aviation and GPS.

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Spacecraft in space.
An artist's concept of DSCOVR.
NOAA

GOLD

Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk

GOLD measures densities and temperatures in Earth’s thermosphere and ionosphere. GOLD makes these measurements, in unprecedented detail, with an ultraviolet (UV) imaging spectrograph on a geostationary satellite.
The goal of the investigation is to provide answers to key elements of an overarching question for Heliophysics science: What is the global-scale response of the thermosphere and ionosphere to forcing in the integrated Sun-Earth system?

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Artist depiction of GOLD mission on black background observing the Earth
The GOLD mission will examine the response of the upper atmosphere to forcing from the Sun, the magnetosphere and the lower atmosphere.

IBEX

Interstellar Boundary Explorer

IBEX is a NASA spacecraft studying how our heliosphere, the magnetic bubble surrounding our Sun and planets, interacts with interstellar space. IBEX created the first maps showing the interactions at that border, and how they change over time.

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An illustration of a spacecraft with blue solar panels on the front and instruments sticking out explores space with Earth visible in the darkness of space..
An illustration of IBEX exploring the edge of our solar system.
NASA GSFC

IRIS

Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph

IRIS observes how solar material moves, gathers energy, and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the Sun's lower atmosphere.

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Interface Region Imaging Spectograph (IRIS) with solar wings deployed in B/159.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

MMS

Magnetospheric Multiscale

MMS investigates how the Sun's and Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other. This process occurs throughout the universe and is known as magnetic reconnection.

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An artistic representation of the MMS fleet of four spacecraft.
NASA/GSFC

Parker Solar Probe

Parker Solar Probe is collecting measurements and images to expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of solar wind. 

On a mission to “touch the Sun,” NASA's Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona – the Sun’s upper atmosphere – in 2021. NASA's Parker Solar Probe will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun and makes critical contributions to forecasting changes in the space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.

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Illustrated spacecraft close to the Sun.
An artist's concept of NASA's Parker Solar Probe observing the Sun.
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

SDO

Solar Dynamics Observatory

SDO studies how solar activity is created and drives space weather, by monitoring the Sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output.

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The Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, like a silver rectangular box, with an antennae attached to the top. On the back are 3 cyclindrical objects and there is a large flat panel protruding from the left and right on the back.
An artist's representation of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory mission.
NASA

SOHO

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

Launched in December 1995, the joint NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission (SOHO), was designed to study the Sun inside out. Though its mission was scheduled to run until only 1998, it has continued collecting data, adding to scientists' understanding of our closest star, and making many new discoveries, including more than 5,000 comets.

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A spacecraft with golden solar arrays appears in the foreground, with a portion of the Sun in the background in the upper right.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been studying the Sun since its launch in December 1995.

Solar Orbiter

An international cooperative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.

Solar Orbiter is a Sun-observing satellite with 10 science instruments, all designed to provide unprecedented insight into how our local star 'works.'

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A portion of the Sun fills most of the left side of the image. On the right against the backdrop of space, Solar Orbiter, with two long panels protruding from each side of a silver box, and antenna attached to the top, back, bottom left, and bottom right, is slightly turned toward the star.
An artist’s concept of Solar Orbiter near the Sun.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

STEREO A & B

Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory

Providing a revolutionary view of the Sun-Earth system, STEREO launched with two nearly identical observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind – to capture stereoscopic images revealing the 3D structure of the Sun’s coronal mass ejections. The STEREO A spacecraft continues to study the Sun today.

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Artist's concept of one of the STEREO spacract in orbit at the Sun.
NASA

TIMED

Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics

The TIMED mission is studying the influence of the Sun and humans on the least explored and understood region of Earth's atmosphere – the mesosphere and lower thermosphere / ionosphere. This region is a gateway between Earth and space, where the Sun's energy is first deposited into Earth's environment.

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Artist's concept of NASA's Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission. Credit: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL).
Artist's concept of NASA's Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission.
NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL).

Voyager 1 & 2

Interstellar Messengers

Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary in 2012, while Voyager 2 (traveling slower and in a different direction than its twin) reached it in 2018.

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An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft.
An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft.
NASA

Wind

Wind measures the incoming solar wind.

Wind is a spin-stabilized spacecraft that observes the solar wind that is about to impact the magnetosphere of Earth.

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An illustration. On the left, there is the Wind spacecraft, small in a cloud of dark orange. On the right, there is the Earth, surrounding by a bubble of blue, with lines stretching toward the right.
An illustration of NASA's Wind spacecraft.
NASA
Framework for Heliophysics education

Heliophysics Resource Database

Find more heliophysics resources at each level in the Heliophysics Resource Database.

Resource Database
In this animated GIF, a small portion of the Sun appears green. A bright white flash suddenly appears on the edge of the Sun.
On Nov. 4, 2003, this solar flare saturated the X-ray detectors on several Sun-observing spacecraft.
NASA/ESA/SOHO